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This was a good read, but I still have more questions and im not grasping this fully.
Fullscreen with vsync on: 1200 clock speed, 80% gpu usage
Fullscreen with vsync off: maxed out clock speed, 55% gpu usage
Fullscreen with vsync off and frame limit off, maxed out clock speed, 90-95% gpu usage
Borderless windowed with vsync on/off maxed out clock speed, 55% gpu usage
Borderless windowed with vsync off + frame limit off = maxed out clock speed and 90-95% gpu usage
My question is why would the game run at 1911 (my max base clock boost) in borderless window if its only using 55% of it? It makes more sense that it's running at 1200 and using 80% of it, using .551911 = 1051/.81200 = 960. Just seems kind of weird how much extra it's doing and not using, despite having vsync enabled

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My question is why would the game run at 1911 (my max base clock boost) in borderless window if its only using 55% of it? It makes more sense that it's running at 1200 and using 80% of it, using .551911 = 1051/.81200 = 960. Just seems kind of weird how much extra it's doing and not using, despite having vsync enabled

vSync is limiting the frame rate to your monitor refresh capability which only takes this much GPU load in full screen. In windowed mode the display manager is involved and rendering some other stuff which results in a difference sometimes very noticeable, depending on other open windows. You cannot directly compare it the way you did. Besides, the load to performance is not linear as the clock is also a variable.
When vSync is off, it will try rendering as much as it can even though your display can’t show that many images in that much time, but it will always have the most recent one when reading the buffer.

vSync is limiting the frame rate to your monitor refresh capability which only takes this much GPU load in full screen. In windowed mode the display manager is involved and rendering some other stuff which results in a difference sometimes very noticeable, depending on other open windows. You cannot directly compare it the way you did. Besides, the load to performance is not linear as the clock is also a variable.
When vSync is off, it will try rendering as much as it can even though your display can’t show that many images in that much time, but it will always have the most recent one when reading the buffer.

So this is all completely normal? It just seemed weird that my clock got so high on most everything I played just from switching to borderless windowed, even without too much running in the background, games that barely ran at 60 fps medium in borderless windowed at 75 degrees celsius are running at 50 degrees Celsius at ultra in fullscreen with vsync

Okay, thank you. It just seemed off with how much my core raises itself. It's nuts that fullscreen with vsync makes such a difference, even though my frames were being limited already. Can't believe vsync makes games run 25c lower, while also allowing me to play them at ultra rather than medium

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Why would you adjust the clock manually? Let it be. It should go to 100% any time you uncap the FPS unless the CPU is bottle-necking. If you want to just lower the temps and noise - use power target for that instead.

Why would you adjust the clock manually? Let it be. It should go to 100% any time you uncap the FPS unless the CPU is bottle-necking. If you want to just lower the temps and noise - use power target for that instead.

Why would you adjust the clock manually? Let it be. It should go to 100% any time you uncap the FPS unless the CPU is bottle-necking. If you want to just lower the temps and noise - use power target for that instead.

Why would you adjust the clock manually? Let it be. It should go to 100% any time you uncap the FPS unless the CPU is bottle-necking. If you want to just lower the temps and noise - use power target for that instead.

So I said earlier wallpaper engine wasnt making a difference, because it's using 0% of my gpu, 0% cpu, and only like 30mb of memory, but apparently that's what was causing it all along, because upon closing it rather than pausing the wallpaper, it ended up fixing my issue entirely. I thought I had tried closing it before, but apparently I hadnt. thank you for your help

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So I said earlier wallpaper engine wasnt making a difference, because it's using 0% of my gpu, 0% cpu, and only like 30mb of memory, but apparently that's what was causing it all along, because upon closing it rather than pausing the wallpaper, it ended up fixing my issue entirely. I thought I had tried closing it before, but apparently I hadnt. thank you for your help

Do you mean the desktop windows manager? It works to integrate all windows into one image. In my case, I see massive FPS drops with Java based apps open in another window while running games... TeamSpeak3 is an example.

Do you mean the desktop windows manager? It works to integrate all windows into one image. In my case, I see massive FPS drops with Java based apps open in another window while running games... TeamSpeak3 is an example.

Wallpaper engine, it's an app for animated wallpapers, but apparently this isnt solved, because closing and opening it was showing the spike in clock, but now the spike is back, and I changed nothing inbetween.

Do you mean the desktop windows manager? It works to integrate all windows into one image. In my case, I see massive FPS drops with Java based apps open in another window while running games... TeamSpeak3 is an example.

So apparently having my razer synapse open was making my temps go up that, I'm kind of lost, upon closing both of my synapse apps in the tray (one for my keyboard and one for my mouse) my usage went back down, despite both of these apps not taking anything out of my cpu and gpu

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Well, if you have everything else minimized and run borderless windowed with vSync off you say it is considerably higher?

The clock should go higher and lower as a function of rendering demand (GPU usage). With uncapped FPS in gaming the usage should go to 100% and stay there, while the clock will be adaptive as a function of temperature and power draw setting.

As I mentioned above, if you want the system to stay cooler, and not loud - limit the power target. If you only want temps lower - limit the temp target and adjust the fan curve. It will always take more effort in windowed mode than it will in Full Screen since you have the DWM involved.

Well, if you have everything else minimized and run borderless windowed with vSync off you say it is considerably higher?

The clock should go higher and lower as a function of rendering demand (GPU usage). With uncapped FPS in gaming the usage should go to 100% and stay there, while the clock will be adaptive as a function of temperature and power draw setting.

As I mentioned above, if you want the system to stay cooler, and not loud - limit the power target. If you only want temps lower - limit the temp target and adjust the fan curve. It will always take more effort in windowed mode than it will in Full Screen since you have the DWM involved.

So basically, I fixed the temperature and clocks rising and falling, it was linked to wallpaper engine, or so I thought, because after I opened back up my razer synapse apps, it was back again, but upon closing them again it's back to normal. So for some reason, 2 apps that take 0% gpu, 0% cpu, sitting in my tray are somehow making my clock and temps rise up, by 25 celsius. They dont even make my chroma work, they just kick it into action, it's automated without them after they launch initially. I don't understand how they would do all of this, considering now I can play in a borderless window without wallpaper engine, and those 2 apps running, and it's the same clock and temps as in fullscreen, but with any of those 3 running in the tray, it goes straight back up to super hot. wallpaper engine makes sense, since it's having an animated wallpaper in the background on the desktop, but razer synapse is just an app that sits there and does nothing, they don't take anything from the gpu or cpu

Well, if you have everything else minimized and run borderless windowed with vSync off you say it is considerably higher?

The clock should go higher and lower as a function of rendering demand (GPU usage). With uncapped FPS in gaming the usage should go to 100% and stay there, while the clock will be adaptive as a function of temperature and power draw setting.

As I mentioned above, if you want the system to stay cooler, and not loud - limit the power target. If you only want temps lower - limit the temp target and adjust the fan curve. It will always take more effort in windowed mode than it will in Full Screen since you have the DWM involved.

fullscreen with vsync off makes my stuff spike back up, despite being capped at 60fps, so its vsync saving me all the heat, I knew that already so like, in borderless windowed with those apps active even though they're in the tray and using nothing, maybe they <Mod Edit> with desktop windows managers built in vsync? Because toggling vsync on and off in the game makes no difference on my temps and core clock in borderless

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With DWM involved, GPU has additional work to do, combining and updating those icons in the taskbar, notification area, and other things involved in your desktop with your game. Fullscreen bypasses those by directly drawing the game to the monitor and running DWM on another one as a separate process.

With DWM involved, GPU has additional work to do, combining and updating those icons in the taskbar, notification area, and other things involved in your desktop with your game. Fullscreen bypasses those by directly drawing the game to the monitor and running DWM on another one as a separate process.

With DWM involved, GPU has additional work to do, combining and updating those icons in the taskbar, notification area, and other things involved in your desktop with your game. Fullscreen bypasses those by directly drawing the game to the monitor and running DWM on another one as a separate process.

So I did more looking into it, and it seems like any 1 thing open in the tray is causing this, whether that be overwolf, or razer synapse, this can't possibly be normal, for temps to raise 25c just from something like that

With DWM involved, GPU has additional work to do, combining and updating those icons in the taskbar, notification area, and other things involved in your desktop with your game. Fullscreen bypasses those by directly drawing the game to the monitor and running DWM on another one as a separate process.

Looking a bit more into it, my cards voltage rises from around .6 to 1.05, which is around the stock voltage for my card, when opening any of those things, so is there something wrong with any of those things that could be causing the voltage to rise so hard, despite them using nothing from the GPU

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